


Dead Man's Bones

by raktajinos



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Conversations, Discussion of Genocide, Female Character of Color, Gen, History, Homework, Philosophy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, briefly suggested Bashir/Garak, critical race theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raktajinos/pseuds/raktajinos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a school assignment, Jake asks Kira to tell him about her experiences during the Occupation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Man's Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinlizzy2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/gifts).



> You requested both Kira and Jake individually, so I thought I'd put them together for a little talk. Hope you like it!

Her fingers tapped nervously around the hot mug in her hands, the raktajinos warming her skin through the replicated stonewear. She sat in a corner of Quark’s, early for her meeting. It was an odd request, when Jake had approached her yesterday. 

_  
“Major Kira,” she’d heard a young man’s voice yell from across the promenade. She had been about to follow Odo into his office, but she turned and saw Jake Sisko waving, running towards her._

_“Jake,” she said warmly, smiling at him._

_“I was hoping I could ask you a favour?” he asked, shifting awkwardly where he stood._

_“Sure, what is it?”_

_“Um….well….for class, we’re supposed to write a paper on Bajoran history and I was wondering...if um...maybe I could interview you for it?” he finally asked._

__

She’d been flattered and reassuringly told the boy she’d be happy to do it, making plans to meet the next day at Quark’s. She wasn’t really sure what he wanted to know, she wasn’t an expert on _all_ of Bajoran history, but she knew quite a bit. The history of her people was long, elegant, and had been threatened with destruction during the occupation. Many of the records had been lost, the Cardassians seeing fit to eradicate them not only from the planet but from the records of history as well. Part of the resistance had been working to preserve them, storing files and artifacts in secret locations, even off-world; there were relics housed in the Klingon archives that the Bajoran government was currently working to get back to the planet. 

She didn’t think much about Jake’s request the rest of the day, too occupied with the day-to-day busywork of running a starbase. However, this morning when she woke up, it was all she could think about. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, what he was going to ask. She’d been involved with several truth and reconcilliation panels on Bajor; panels set up to hear and bear witness to the experiences during the occupation. It was a way for her people to heal, to express their emotions and bond through a collective understanding of trauma. 

This would not be that. Jake Sisko was not a Bajoran expat. Nor was he a Starfleet representative, and goodness knows she’d had enough ‘enlightening’ conversations with those people about history to last her a lifetime. Her conversation with Jake wouldn’t be about healing or about proving yourself, he would simply be curious. For people like him, the occupation _was_ history; yes, it would continue to affect the political reality he lived in and he would have friends with scars, but it was in the past. 

That more than anything sent a wave of sickness to her stomach. It didn’t feel to her as if it was history; she woke up every night with nightmares and terrors about the things she’d seen, done, had done to her. 

She shook herself, there was a chance he wouldn’t even ask about the Occupation, perhaps he’d be interested in another area in their history. 

Unlikely though. _Everyone_ wanted to talk about the Occupation. 

\--

She didn’t have to wait for very much longer, the boy showed up exactly on time, ordering himself a hot tea from the bar and joining her at the table. 

“Good morning Major Kira,” he greeted kindly. 

“Good morning, Jake,” she said back. She liked Jake, he was smart, polite and inquisitive. 

“So what did you want to talk about?” she asked after a moment where he didn’t say anything. 

“Um, well I can focus on anything I want, but…” he trailed off, the awkward look from yesterday returning. 

“but, you want to talk about the Occupation,” she said. 

“yeah. Is that okay?

“Yes, what would you like to know?”

“I mean, I know Bajor has this fascinating history - or at least my father is always telling me that. And I believe him, but I want to know more about recent history,” he started explaining, hands gesturing, “I have friends in my class who lived through it and I don’t….like I don’t understand. I can’t understand, not really. But I want to try. So I thought if I learned more….and like not what the datapacks tell me. I know the dates and statistics….” he trailed off. 

She smiled sadly at him, a bit in awe of his reasoning, “you want to know the human side of it,” she said, using the colloquialism casually. 

“Ya,” he said, huffing out a bit as if he’d just let a large weight off his chest.  
“I think that’s a very good thing to be doing Jake,” 

He smiled widely at her, pleased with her approval. 

“Where would you like to start?” 

“Ummm….,” he said, picking up his padd and flicking through the pages of notes he had scribbled there. 

“Have you ever killed anyone?” he asked quietly. 

Right. Starting off with the big stuff. 

“Yes,”

“How many?”

“I’m honestly not sure. A few hundred perhaps?” she ventured, not offended when he gasped a little at her confession. For a boy who grew up in a safe world full of kindness, he _should_ be appalled, she’d be concerned if he wasn’t. 

“I participated in several large-scale terrorist attacks, striking prime Cardassian targets and outposts. We have estimations of how many people were inside each compound, but we’re not sure. I’ve also killed several dozen Cardassians in hand-to-hand combat,”

“and um...what’s that like?”

“oh, delightful,” she said sarcastically, immediately softening her gaze. “Sorry, I mean, it’s what you had to do. It was kill or be killed. I don’t regret what I did. I take comfort in believing that every small thing I did someway helped contribute to the exodus of the Cardassians from Bajor,” she paused, firmly behind the truth of that statement. 

“But it’s not to say I’m...comfortable with killing people. It’s not something that comes easily and nor is it something you get over. You should ask your father about this, he’s killed before,”

“He won’t talk to me about it yet, he says I’m too young to know that stuff yet,” Jake said, eyes slanting ever so slightly as if annoyed. 

At fifteen Jake was old enough to know these things; if he was old enough to ask, he was old enough to know. 

“But you don’t agree with him,” she said back, a challenge in her voice. 

“No,” the boy said defiantly, chin poised. 

She grinned at him. Good. She didn’t like to go behind Ben Sisko’s orders, especially when it came to parenting; it wasn’t her place. But on this issue, she was comfortable answering his questions on the matter. Within reason of course. She wasn’t going to get too graphic and terrorize him. 

She nodded at him, “I was younger than you when I killed my first Cardassian,” she said, staring down into her coffee, old memories floating to the surface of her memory. 

Jake gasped again, “really?” 

_  
She’d been thirteen and she had been off picking berries, her family - a collection of soldiers, farmers and academics they’d collected as they moved around the continent - when their encampment was attacked. It was just a small scout party, six Cardassians, but one had gone off to search the perimeter and come across her. She wasn’t far from camp, still within eyesight of it. She had screamed when he grabbed her, the basket of berries falling on the ground, rolling everywhere. She kicked and screamed, biting at him with her teeth. She had a knife in her boot, but the man had her arms bound tightly against her body and she could reach for it. She remembered seeing Garan and a few others from the camp running towards her, weapons raised, the six Cardassians laying dead in the camp._

_Her memory was a bit fuzzy, but she calmed down, she remembers that, but cannot for the life of her remember how she did it; she just did, her body relaxing in the man’s grasp, giving him a false sense of security and she took the opportunity to kick him, forcing him to stumble and she grabbed his hand, twisting the joint swifty and forcefully, just like she’d been taught, cracking the bones and dislocating his shoulder._

_All children were taught how to fight; hand-to-hand, gun, phaser and knife skills as well as how to improvise with your surroundings. By the age of 10 all Bajoran children knew at least twenty different ways to kill a Cardassian. Knowing it and doing it were two different things however._

_The Cardassian had screamed at the pain and turned his gaze on her, eyes black with hatred, coming at her with his good arm. She’d grabbed the knife from her boot and held it out in a defensive pose. He laughed at her; _laughed_ at her and her knife and her pathetic attempt to defend herself. _

_It all happened so fast, because by the time her family got to her place on the hilltop, she was squatting in the dirt, hands covered in blood with the Cardassian laying next to her dead. He’d launched at her and she’d used speed and her small size to duck under him, thrusting the knife upwards as she did, using all her force to shove the sharp blade into his chest, blood running hot down her arm._

_She hit her target. Like she would every time after that. She never missed._

_She’d cried that afternoon while someone, she couldn’t remember who, washed the blood off her hands and her knife. Someone else fed her tea and soup, telling her how brave she’d been._

_She’d earned her warrior title that day._

__

She looked up at Jake after telling him the story, a mix of horror and awe on his face. 

“Wow,” he said, shaking himself. “That’s awful,”

“Yes,” she laughed.

“Cardassians suck,” he swore, his voice low. 

She couldn’t disagree with him. She’d been raised to hate them and had been given more than enough reasons to hate them. But something in hearing him say it, felt wrong. 

Over Jake’s shoulder she saw Garak walk into the bar, accompanied by Bashir for their usual weekly lunch. She didn’t get it, how someone could be so friendly with a Cardassian, she could barely stand to be civil to the man let alone be friends with him. Or whatever the hell it was the two of them had going on; she heard rumours. How he could let the hands of _that_ touch him she had no idea...if indeed that was going on. Somedays she didn’t understand why Sisko let him remain on the station, if she was in charge she would have kicked him out with the rest of his disgusting race. 

But the other part of her, the part she’d been trying to bring out, thought the world needed more people like Bashir and Garak, people who wanted to find commonality across seemingly uncrossable barriers. For so long she’d been running on the anger and violence in her, she’d forgotten how to trust others. Her entire people had, becoming ironically xenophobic over the generations. 

It made sense for her people to hate Cardassians, they would continue to hate them for decades to come. Forgiveness and remembrance were not the same thing and the attrocities were too fresh in people’s minds to even contemplate forgiveness. 

She must have been staring because Jake turned to look where she was focused on, his eyes resting on Garak and Bashir. 

“Oh, well except Garak. I like him. He’s funny. Odo likes him too,” he said. 

She looked at Jake, and despite his earlier claims against the contrary, he was still very clearly a boy with much growing to do. He hated Cardassians, and yet Garak was exempt from that rule. It was a dangerous path to take, to hate a group of people as a blanket rule but to have an ‘except’ clause, as if some members of a race were elevated above the horrors of their people. 

She was about to tell this to Jake, to tell him he shouldn’t hate them so blindly, when the irony hit her. _She_ liked Garak, and if she could put aside the rage she felt whenever she saw him, like when she went and had him tailor clothes, or design something for Odo (who did indeed like Garak like Jake said, in his own way) or when Bashir was having one of his dinner parties and Garak was the life of the party...or the dozens of time’s he’d put his life on the line for the crew here. He wasn’t a representative of his people. 

She needed to start thinking of it differently. If she was ever going to heal her soul, she had to. She always thought of him as Cardassian first, than Garak. When instead it should be the other way around. She should think of him as Garak first, and then what he was. However, Cardassians didn’t get a pass because she happened to like this _one_ , one whom she didn’t know all the horrible things he must have done during the war. No one was clean. 

“Yes, except Garak,” she finally said when Jake had turned back around to her, she lost in her thoughts for only a moment. 

“But you shouldn’t hate all Cardassians so freely Jake,” she started. It was important he not go down this path. 

“Why not, they’ve done horrible things,”

“Yess…” she drew out. It was complicated. 

“It’s complicated,” she echoed her thoughts out loud. 

He gave her a questioning look. 

“For Bajor to heal, we need to move past our hate...eventually. Not right now. Now, we need to hate to heal, to forge strength, to move forward,” she said, feeling like she was explaining it badly. 

“But at some point, we need to move past that. If we let the hate consume us, it will poison our souls and we risk becoming no better than those who oppressed us. We can never forget what has happened….we need to remember what we felt, _how_ we felt and work to ensure this never happens to anyone on Bajor ever again,” 

She didn’t mean to turn it into a lecture, the poor boy just wanted some exciting war stories, some lighter fare to help him connect with his friends. He wasn’t prepared for the Kira Nerys Lecture on Complicated Race Theory. 

He looked confused, his young face warped into a pained expression. She watched as his face changed, as if he was actively processing what she’d just said. 

“That makes sense I think,” he finally said. 

“It does?” she said doubtingly. She barely understood what she’d said. The things she was saying, she barely believed them yet. Rationally she knew them to be true, but she wasn’t ready to believe them. She still hated Cardassians, she still recoiled whenever she ran into Garak….even Ziyal, a woman she loved yet whose father was a man she hated with more intensity than she hated anything else in the world. 

“Ya. My dad really likes history and so he’s always lecturing me on stuff,” he said and Kira smirked, realizing her lecturing him was nothing new if the experience was a staple at home, “and if there’s anything he’s always referring to it’s how history repeats itself and how we need to learn from it. So I guess...Bajor needs to learn from this to be better leaders for their people?” he said, phrasing the last as a question in case he was wrong. 

“Exactly,” she said smiling at him. He was right but again she wasn’t sure that was what she was trying to say. 

“And I shouldn’t hate blindly because then I might repeat history,” he said, nodding his head slightly as if he was repeating the lesson notes to himself for a test later. 

“Correct,”

A moment of silence passed between them, Kira lost in her thoughts once more. He was a good kid. He was going to be fine. And Bajor was going to be okay...eventually. 

“Hey, but back to that assignment, what else do you want to talk about? How about the time I accidentally set fire to my bunk….”


End file.
